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Topic

Police Oversight and the Search for Justice in British Columbia

School of Public Administration

Date & location

• Wednesday, April 9, 2025
• 10:00 A.M.
• Virtual Defence

Examining Committee

Supervisory Committee

• Prof. Robert Lapper, School of Public Administration, University of Victoria (Supervisor)
• Dr. Sarah Marie Wiebe, School of Public Administration, UVic (Member)

External Examiner

• Dr. Michelle Bonner, Department of Political Science, UVic

Chair of Oral Examination

• Dr. Georgia Sitara, Department of History, UVic

Abstract

In BC, the civilian-led police oversight system responsible for incidents of serious harm and deaths was created to advance the interlinked goals of delivering accountability while increasing transparency and public trust and confidence in policing and oversight. The system is simultaneously heralded as exemplary and decried as protecting criminal police, but little is known about the tangible outcomes of charges, prosecutions and convictions of police officers, allowing the concerns and experiences of marginalized people and communities to be labelled as anecdotes or “one-offs” caused by a “bad apple.” This thesis utilizes a mixed methods approach to evaluate the system’s achievement of its goals, layering the quantitative analysis of the outcomes of investigations and prosecutions of police with a qualitative examination of the sociopolitical context as well as the lived realities of people caught up in this system through an interview with the former head of the Independent Investigations Office, three case studies and a jurisdictional scan. The research uncovers a system unexpectedly focused on driving-related crimes, comprising 78.5% of the convictions secured between 2014 and 2021, rather than the high-profile, controversial, trust-undermining allegations, such as excessive use of force, that it was created to address. Upon closer examination, a myriad of problem spots emerged that call into question the system’s impartiality and, in its current structure, its ability to hold police to account and achieve its goals.